Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#61

Post by zosima » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #41

hannob wrote: post #31

I found the intro very confusing, tbh. Particularly the "no increased risk of all-cause mortality". I mean, if we assume the vaccines worked, we'd certainly expect a decreased risk of all-case mortality (because "all-case mortality" certainly includes "covid mortality"). Reading "no increase" seems to imply "it doesn't change anything". Yeah, technically, the sentence does not say that ("no increase" can mean "no dec…

Frame it as the safety of the vaccine, not the efficacy of it. If it was about efficacy, it would lead with the 25% lower risk because of COVID safety. But, these days, there are people who think vaccines are dangerous just because, so saying that taking the vaccine or not has equal mortality puts that to rest (or at least does for those who find science real).

The reduction in all-cause mortality was independent of covid deaths.

Which seems to suggest that there was big differences between the groups other than the vaccination.

This of course does not change that the vaccine seems mostly safe, but it definitely calls in to question whether the protection against covid death was vaccine-mediated or due to some other difference between the groups.

Therefore this paper is moderately strong evidence for the vaccine being safe, but quite weak evidence for the vaccine being efficacious.

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#62

Post by sixQuarks » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

blindriver wrote: post #42

They define unvaccinated as anyone in the study who didn't get their first dose by Nov 2021. That feels like a pretty tight window to me. I don't think they checked to see if those "unvaccinated" people got vaccinated during the 4 year followup, especially given the mandates that forced people to get them.

[flagged]

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#63

Post by stackedinserter » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

dalbaugh wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, I don't think any additional evidence will convince vaccine skeptics of the safety of mRNA vaccines

I give you this pill that makes you suffer for a year, but you will not die in 4 years. If it's safe to you, then alcohol and smoking are safe too.

Edit: OTOH that pill will reduce your chance to suffer even more or even die, which is a good thing ofc

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#64

Post by lesuorac » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #49

arnoooooo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study demonstrates that it benefits the individual (and therefore the population).

No it doesn’t. I’m not trying to make a point about vaccines, just that the study is a population study and so shows benefits on average to a population. If the vaccine killed 1/100 people (again I don’t believe this but it’s the internet) but made the other 99 immune to dying over the 4 years, it would look really good on average even if it was directly responsible for the deaths of 1%.

Well, if say the vaccine gave 1/100 fatal lung cancer then a population study would show a decrease in covid deaths and an increase in lung cancer deaths though.

It's only the case if the vaccine gave everybody slightly higher chances of dying from everything that it could hide in the weeds.

So in this specific example we can see from Table 2 that deaths/1 million are just lower for everything in the vaccinated so it's not the case that it lowered one kind of death drastically at the expense of another.

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#65

Post by rob_c » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

NB: most people choosing not to take it in France tend to fall into the medically at risk, stubborn, or, "so far down the rabbit hole that you probably can't trust these people to make sensible life choices" groups. (This alone being a good reason why this 'control' group had a slightly higher all cause mortality at 6months)

Remember, France was one of the wonderful countries where you couldn't legally shop or work if you were deemed to be 'not at risk' && 'unvaccinated' and achieved a very high rate as a result biasing the control group. (This is a purely statistical statement)

And for reference, I do think the vax is dangerous in terms of massive populations and we don't have mass graves due to mRNA problems (although several large cancer blips). In the same way in countries with low vaccination rates we don't have mass graves at 10% population or higher. Cv19 was always going to kill and an untested treatment is likely to kill those who were at risk.

(I'm willing to bet in the case of cv19 the ones who were hit hardest would have been hit badly by either vector, virus or mRNA. But we'll pretty much never be able to prove or disprove that...)

I'm sure both extremes will jump to the rallying cry of "2 more weeks..." So yes of course I'm wrong, I only worked on analysing early 'data' and pulling apart the models so what do I know.

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#66

Post by andreygrehov » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

dalbaugh wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, I don't think any additional evidence will convince vaccine skeptics of the safety of mRNA vaccines

FDA is imposing stricter vaccine protocols due to children deaths linked to Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis [1].

[1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#67

Post by wnevets » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

andreygrehov wrote: post #66

dalbaugh wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, I don't think any additional evidence will convince vaccine skeptics of the safety of mRNA vaccines

FDA is imposing stricter vaccine protocols due to children deaths linked to Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis [1]. [1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

RFK Jr's FDA is imposing stricter vaccine protocols due to children deaths linked to Covid-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#68

Post by a_cardboard_box » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #41

hannob wrote: post #31

I found the intro very confusing, tbh. Particularly the "no increased risk of all-cause mortality". I mean, if we assume the vaccines worked, we'd certainly expect a decreased risk of all-case mortality (because "all-case mortality" certainly includes "covid mortality"). Reading "no increase" seems to imply "it doesn't change anything". Yeah, technically, the sentence does not say that ("no increase" can mean "no dec…

Frame it as the safety of the vaccine, not the efficacy of it. If it was about efficacy, it would lead with the 25% lower risk because of COVID safety. But, these days, there are people who think vaccines are dangerous just because, so saying that taking the vaccine or not has equal mortality puts that to rest (or at least does for those who find science real).

Yes, but they incorrectly called it all-cause mortality under Findings. "Mortality" on it's own would be fine. "Mortality from other causes" would be better.

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#69

Post by turnsout » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

laichzeit0 wrote: post #36

dalbaugh wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, I don't think any additional evidence will convince vaccine skeptics of the safety of mRNA vaccines

Unfortunately, this is an observational study and when you get to the confounding part, they kind of shrug their shoulders and say “well, we included a bunch of covariates that should reduce make the bias go away”, but there’s no causal diagram so we have no idea how they reasoned about this. If you’ve read even something layman friendly like Pearl’s Book of Why you should be feeling nervous about this.

Are there really antivax people that would know the word "covariate?" That's gotta be a small Venn diagram overlap.

Re: Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality

#70

Post by lesuorac » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

zosima wrote: post #61

eddieroger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frame it as the safety of the vaccine, not the efficacy of it. If it was about efficacy, it would lead with the 25% lower risk because of COVID safety. But, these days, there are people who think vaccines are dangerous just because, so saying that taking the vaccine or not has equal mortality puts that to rest (or at least does for those who find science real).

The reduction in all-cause mortality was independent of covid deaths. Which seems to suggest that there was big differences between the groups other than the vaccination. This of course does not change that the vaccine seems mostly safe, but it definitely calls in to question whether the protection against covid death was vaccine-mediated or due to some other difference between the groups. Therefore this paper is mod…

Covid hospitalizations where half in the vaccinated group (as % of pop) than unvaccinated. That's extremely desirable when you're in a situation where you have do dedicate whole wings (and then some) of hospitals to a singular disease.

Sure, it's not a silver bullet but it's at least stainless steel.